For generations, anglers have performed worm grunting (a.k.a. charming, fiddling, snoring, rubbing, or calling) to entice worms out of the ground. Worm grunting even has its very own annual festival. After accompanying Grunting King Gary Revell Vanderbilt neurobiologist Kenneth Catania has explained why scraping a "stob" or twanging a pitchfork brings the worms a-callin'.

For a really good time, take your kids and grandkids, too. This is a great family outing.

Yeeehaaaaa!

What about near roads and driveways? Are they becoming depleted of worms? How far away does the effect extend? That is to say, what "volume" of vibration is enough to elicit a worm and what distance from the road does this volume still obtain (if at all)?posted by DU at 11:02 AM on June 16, 2009

Hey! I've been to Sopchoppy! But not during the Worm Grunting Festival. More's the pity.

Also, I've seen old fishermen use an overturned plastic 5-gallon bucket, a rock and a rasp to grunt up some bait.posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:05 AM on June 16, 2009

The most incredible thing about that video is how much money there is in earthworms. How can that be? I kinda skipped around, did he mention a big inheritance or a side business as a plastic surgeon or anything?posted by DU at 11:14 AM on June 16, 2009

Once, while on my paper route in the dead of 3:00 am, I came around a corner and found a pile of worms like that (only nobody was holding it). Like a rat king but of worms. Scarred and intrigued me for life. WTF was that?

(Just in case anyone CAN answer this question but needs more info: Iowa, after (during?) a rain, on an asphalt road but in a town small enough that I couldn't have been more than a few hundred yards from open fields.)posted by DU at 11:28 AM on June 16, 2009

Let me take you to my hometown in Texas and together we'll document the regional variation and then publish an article in a scholarly journal.posted by mudpuppie at 12:04 PM on June 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

"Let me take you to my hometown in Texas and together we'll document the regional variation and then publish an article in a scholarly journal."

Actually, that sounds pretty cool. My reference point is my hometown (Houston).posted by Bugbread at 12:07 PM on June 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

I heard this story on NPR a few weeks ago. I for one think it's awesome! I get a kick out of all the old-tyme tricks that people never knew existed.posted by TomMelee at 12:55 PM on June 16, 2009

They play cornhole at the worm grunting festival?

...what, I'm only seeing horseshoes is all.posted by Smedleyman at 1:26 PM on June 16, 2009

As a kid, I did this all the time down in Northeast Texas. It was easy for us - our dirt was rich and black, and there were a ton of worms in the earth at least until July - that's when it would generally get too hot to pull them out of the ground. We would just take a stick and shove it deep in the ground, and then use another stick to rub up against the side of the first stick, occasionally tapping it. The worms would just flow out of the ground as fast as we could catch them.posted by bradth27 at 5:45 PM on June 16, 2009

Jerusalem Boogie to us, perhaps, but to the birds, it means one thing: Supper's Ready.posted by anazgnos at 11:32 PM on June 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

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